What Does Deuteronomy 14:14 Mean?
And every raven after its kind.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And every raven after his kind,THE KEY
The Hebrew phrase places the raven inside a מִין (mîn, kind or species), so the boundary covers a class of birds, not just one.
THE MEANING
The raven is named within the boundary around what is eaten, and that boundary extends to its kind. The verse marks a whole category, not merely a single bird.
THE ROOT
לְמִינוֹ
leminô
GROWS FROM
מין
kind, sort, species
מִין (mîn, kind or species) makes the category itself carry the boundary: the line reaches beyond one raven to its whole kind. The suffix in לְמִינוֹ (leminô, according to its kind) refers back to the raven; “his” does not identify a male bird.
ALSO GROWS
mînîm: kinds, species
מִינִים
The plural form of the same noun shows how the category can group many creatures by kind.
leminah: according to its kind
לְמִינָהּ
This feminine form of the same phrase appears in the creation account; the kind remains the category even as the creature named changes.
THE PATTERN
The text preserves distinctions among living things by naming their kinds, so a boundary can extend across a category.
And God created the great sea serpents, and every living soul that creeps, which the waters swarmed with after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.Every raven after his kind,But God gives it a body as he willed, and to each seed its own body.THE THREAD
And God created the great sea serpents, and every living soul that creeps, which the waters swarmed with after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good.Genesis uses the same מִין (mîn, kind or species) word to describe categories of living creatures. Here that category carries the boundary around the raven beyond an individual bird.
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